Why no one is interacting with your Facebook page

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So, let’s say you have a decent chunk of followers on Facebook, but your posts continue to experience little to no engagement. If you’re wondering why you have hundreds or thousands of followers but only get a couple likes and maybe one comment on each post you publish, then here are three possible reasons for low engagement figures:

Your Facebook Page and Posts Are Boring

Sorry to be so harsh right off the bat, but this is a problem that’s fixable. Many Facebook users don’t think twice when liking a page that seems interesting (based on an ad they saw) or that their friends recommended to them. Since many users have hundreds, if not thousands of friends whose posts are already clogging their feeds, the last thing you need is a boring or irrelevant post that will get lost in the masses.

Worse yet: what if you create a brilliant ad that entices followers to flock to your page …. only to discover a relatively empty page with a dull or low-quality cover photo, minimal information about your brand, few recent posts, and few images? The old adage of “don’t judge a book by its cover” rings true for Facebook advertising as well: you don’t want your ads to be more exciting than your page itself. Otherwise, people may unfollow your page or abandon your page altogether in hopes of finding another brand with more valuable information to offer.

You’re Limiting Your Advertising Strategy

A common problem many companies and organizations run into is deciding on an ideal campaign strategy. For new and experienced marketers alike, the option to grow your follower base seems like the best option because who doesn’t want more followers? However, this singular strategy can be pretty limiting when it comes to long-lasting results. It’s easy to click “like” on a sponsored post — it takes someone significantly more effort to scroll through the brand’s page, comment on posts, and share content with their own friends.

Rather than limiting yourself to paid advertising campaigns that solely emphasize racking up followers, consider adding campaigns that seek to increase engagement among your existing base. In other words, you can create a group of ads that invites followers to respond to thought-provoking questions, share their own experiences, or even tantalizes them with a contest open exclusively to followers of your page.

You’re Not Engaging with Them

Why should people comment on your page, like your photos, and share your posts if you don’t give them any incentives to do so? One of the biggest reasons why you might rack up a huge but silent following on Facebook is because you and your marketing team aren’t actively reaching out to those followers once they’ve liked your page.

Sure, you may put out great content, but that’s not sufficient enough to engage your audience. Unless you’re asking them personally relevant questions, requesting specific feedback about your products/services, and giving them other incentives to like or comment on your posts/page, you won’t be able to increase your follower engagement levels. It certainly requires more time and effort to respond, but the long-term benefits of personalizing your customers’ experiences with your brand on social media will be worth it.

Four festive ways to attract holiday shoppers on social media

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The winter holidays are just around the corner, which means the holiday shopping season is already underway. Online shopping is expected to grow as much as 4 percent this season, according to the National Retail Federation, so it’s crucial for online businesses to ramp up their marketing efforts as soon as possible to attract more holiday shoppers looking for cool gifts and sweet deals. You shouldn’t just promote your items and services exactly the same way you promote them all year long, however. To truly capture your audience’s attention, here are a few festive, holiday-themed ways to stand out this winter:

Create Holiday-Themed Banners and Profile Pictures

Even if it’s as simple as finding a stock photo of a dog in a sweater or a family sitting by a grand fireplace, transforming your social pages with holiday-themed photos is a great way to let your followers know you’re actively dedicated to making their holidays the most wonderful time of the year. Adorable photos of kids wearing Santa hats or animals sporting ugly holiday sweaters are bound to generate significant attention among the holiday crowd (though make sure you choose photos that are relevant to your brand’s offerings). For the most diverse approach possible, try to incorporate multiple winter symbols beyond just Christmas figures and colors so you can reach audiences that celebrate many different holidays.

Roll Out Winter Holiday Promotions

What’s the point of running winter holiday-themed marketing campaigns if you’re not including a special deal to incentivize winter shoppers to visit your website or e-store? Even if you just offer free shipping or a 10% discount for limited periods of time, customers are ultimately bargain-hunters who want to stretch their budgets to find the best items for friends and family members. Your holiday promotion might include a discount code for your Instagram followers, Facebook giveaways exclusively for followers, website-wide discounts for anyone who visits your site, and so much more. The more creative you are, the more your audiences will appreciate your brand and likely spend more time browsing your website when searching for holiday gifts.

Accumulate User-Generated Content with Festive Contests

Your marketing efforts might also include contests designed to build your treasure trove of user-generated content. This is an ideal strategy for brands with considerable presence on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, and you can create contests by crafting a unique hashtag for users to include in their posts as part of their contest entries. User-generated content is highly effective because it relies on word-of-mouth marketing (which is oftentimes more trustworthy to consumers compared to other forms of marketing) and you can later re-use that content as part of your own social channels’ marketing strategy to attract as many winter holiday shoppers as you possibly can.

Write Creative Copy Based on Holiday Jingles

Want to wow your followers with your creativity and generate more interest in what your brand has to offer? Consider incorporating Christmas carols and other winter jingles into your copy for social posts by rewriting the lyrics with words and phrases more relevant to your brand. For instance, if you sell pet products, you could write something like, “Fetch the balls with your border collie” (play on “Deck the Halls”). To successfully imitate winter holiday songs, it’s important to use words that sound relatively similar to the original song and have the same number of syllables in the copy.

How to network via social media

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Whether you run a sales team or an entire business, you must have a social media strategy to survive. It’s essential to social networking and connecting with the top influencers in your industry. However, there are other benefits, such as advertising to promote your products and services as well as improve customer satisfaction by analyzing customer feedback. Social media is a great way to give your customers a voice.

Facebook is one of the top social networking opportunities. Whether or not you use Facebook personally, your business should have a Facebook page or a presence with other prominent social networking sites. LinkedIn is another platform you’ll want to consider. By building your core group of connections on LinkedIn, you’ll be growing your business. Your LinkedIn connections will become advocates for your brand and help promote the message of your business. Of course, you shouldn’t forget Twitter. A short concise message to your Twitter followers is an effective way to spread your company’s mission to your target audience.

But each platform is different and attracts a different audience. Experiment with various platforms until you find one that sticks.

By analyzing the feedback left on your pages, you can gather helpful suggestions or criticism of your services or products, often for free. Social networking is also a great way to retain your best customers. They will enjoy the interaction with your company and come back often to hear about your company’s events and promotions. Everyone knows it costs less to retain an old customer than to find new ones.

So, if you’ve found yourself either confused by the proliferation of so many social media networks or just unsure whether it’s right for your business, put some thought into establishing a presence on at least one platform.

When social media and social networking intersect

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Do you remember the last time you experienced a moment when your social media and in-person networks came together? It could have been at a trade show or just a chance meeting in a coffee shop. Either way, it’s pretty cool when these two worlds collide. We’ll bet you were even able to compliment one of their recent posts, too. This sort of synergy isn’t just good for your personal network, but for your professional one, as well.

In fact, bridging the gap between social media and in-person relationships can be both fun and informative. Meeting with those online connections in person present strategic opportunities to take the relationship to the next level.

That’s why it’s important to participate in regular social-media interchanges before you attend upcoming trade shows. Think about it: your contacts can then help you promote the event! When you arrive at the trade-show event, dive right in to glad-hand the visitors that stop by your exhibit. You should have tables, furnishings and plenty of handouts available.

When you link-up in person at trade-show events with someone who has already connected with you through LinkedIn, that relational exchange brings a synergistic element to the table. Face-to-face conversation strengthens those relationships through the act of bridging the online and in-person aspects of social interchanges. And let’s face it, it also makes you feel better about yourself when you have a digital Rolodex to refer to when meeting an online acquaintance in person. Gone are the days of forgetting about the little personal details that can make or break a business relationship.

That’s why you’ll want to be sure to have all your social-media channels printed on your marketing collateral. Consider including a digital QR Code on every piece of literature, too. Make those connections and remember to smile. That’s the most powerful strategy of all!

Want your Facebook page to flourish? Start here

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Most businesses know Facebook is constantly tweaking its algorithm. This presents a challenge to those looking to garner exposure and attract a strong audience for their brands. Here are four tips that you might not have heard of to bump up your likes and get your message in front of more people.

  1. Let your personal Facebook friends know about your business page. Now that pages aren’t being seen that much organically, even by people who’ve liked them, this is a great way to introduce people to your business page without advertising. Using the @ symbol, tag your page in the post so that your friends can click right over to it.
  2. Do some offline relationship building. Reach out to other small businesses in your area. Get to know the owners and suggest doing some Facebook cross-promotion. Come up with a virtual event, like a webinar, which you can both contribute to. Advertise it together. After the event, share each other’s posts on your pages periodically.
  3. Leverage your website by adding a Facebook like button or box. This is an especially great way to develop an engaged fan base. If they’re coming from your website, they’re clearly already interested in what you offer. To make the most of these fans, be sure to post engaging content consistently.
  4. Add a Facebook icon, linking to your page, your email signature and your email newsletters. Email is an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Think about it: We’re all in and out of email all day long, so it makes sense to maximize that opportunity to reach people. Another way to leverage email is to share a Facebook post headline in the message that links to that post on your page.

There are lots of ways to grow your Facebook audience. These simple techniques are easy to implement. Yet they are powerful tools to increase your visibility and expand your following.

Word-of-mouth marketing done right

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Real-life experiences matter, especially in today’s social media-driven world where one good experience can make your business and one bad experience can break it. Simply put, people trust recommendations from friends and family more than they trust advertising by companies.

Word of mouth is a powerful way to boost sales, and social media presents the opportunity to multiply this person-to-person sharing exponentially.

The key to creating experiences that are worth sharing is to focus on engaging with your audience, rather than on adding followers.

Start by being present. It’s not enough to post glossy product pics or motivational quotes. Really listen to what your audience is saying. Respond to what you’re hearing. Be part of the conversation. Use social media as a customer service tool as well as a sales tool.

Give your audience something to talk about. Ask for feedback on packaging. Share behind-the-scenes glimpses. Invite them to name your next product. Query them about what they’d like to see next from you. Create a custom hashtag to tie the community together and give fans a way to talk to each other.

Add a charitable component. One of the best ways to inspire people to share is to do good. This type of consumer-driven charity is very powerful because it’s a win-win. When your customer buys from you, they know that they’ll be supporting an important cause at the same time. Run a campaign where you donate a percentage of your proceeds to a charitable organization you’re passionate about.

For word-of-mouth marketing to be successful, it’s got be authentic. So make sure that any shareable content you create or any interaction you have is genuine. It’s a two-way street. When you build your community this way, your social media followers become ambassadors for your brand, which is the best kind of marketing there is.

Emails are a critical part of web marketing

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Let’s see if any of this sounds familiar: your content team has just written the most amazing blog post. It’s been published on your site and promoted via social media. But, alas, nobody is reading your blog post.

If this has happened to you, maybe it’s time to start leveraging email marketing. In fact, email marketing is still one of the most effective ways you can communicate directly with your customers, as long as it is done correctly. Here are some tips to make sure your emails engage your audience from start to finish.

Write a short, attention-getting subject line
The subject line is actually the most important part of your email. It’s the first thing your reader sees and it needs to be compelling enough to make them want to click. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your subject line is short (only about 5-10 words maximum) and creative. Hook your readers with a question, a unique fact, a current news trend or something else that will catch their interest.

Make the email conversational
No one wants to read an email that is too promotional and does not relate to them. Incorporating a conversational tone will allow you to connect better with the reader and engage them until the end.

Keep the copy to around 2-3 small paragraphs
Studies show that the attention span of your audience is about less than a minute when it comes to email. This means you got to make the copy tight and straight to the point. This will allow your audience to quickly read your email so they then in turn will visit your website.

Include a high-quality photo
According to research, emails have a higher conversion rate when a photo is included. A great place for the photo is at the top of the email before the text or on the top right or left of the email.

Include a call-to-action
After your audience is done reading your email, what do you want them to do? Make sure your call-to-action is clear at the end of your email. Many successful marketers include a link to a landing page or to an article as their call-to-action.

Send often, but not too much
If you send out too many emails, you will end up getting a lot of unsubscribers. To avoid that, send out your emails at least once or twice a month at the minimum and no more than once a week at the maximum. How often you send out emails will largely depend on the nature of your business and the content you are pitching in your email.

Following these tips will help to improve the effectiveness of your email marketing and can ultimately increase the amount of traffic on your website.

Entrepreneurs, need a boost? Try these six tips.

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What’s the secret to building your own business? The short answer is there is no magic bullet. Rather success (or failure) hinges on numerous factors.

You’ve done your homework, evaluated your own strengths and weaknesses and found the industry that’s right for you. You’ve raised the capital, made the investment and hired the employees. You’ve opened your doors.

Here are some tips and techniques to take your enterprise to the next level:

1. Continually improve

Build your own business by building your skills. Make sure you know basic business acumen: how to read a balance sheet, how to create a financial statement, how to hire good employees and how to manage cash flow. If you don’t have these skills, or you could use a boost, take courses at your local college, continuing education center or online. A great online resource is Lynda, which is often available for free through your local library. Ask around!

2. Have a business plan

Write down your goals for sales, cash flow, debt and profits. Learn your market and do a financial projection. Decide where and how often to advertise. Plan, plan, plan!

3. Have a marketing plan

Marketing and promotion are essential to build your own business. Research opportunities to get the word out about your company. This can include ads in local media, giveaways at your location, sponsorship of Little League teams and many other opportunities.

4. Don’t forget social media

Social media is an increasingly important part of building brand recognition and driving sales. Make sure you incorporate a social media presence into your overall marketing plan. Define a message you want to promote on social media, and make sure your customers—and potential customers—can find you easily on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat (for younger audiences) and LinkedIn. And keep monitoring other social media platforms. It’s not hard to have a presence on any social medium, but you have to make sure it’s up to date.

5. Know your industry

It never hurts to know what the competition is doing. Join industry and local associations and read the websites and publications. Stay on top of developments so they don’t take you by surprise.

6. Focus on your customers

Ask for customer feedback and respond to it in a timely fashion, in every way possible—social media, surveys, contests and giveaways, and good, old-fashioned talking to people. Provide pricing incentives to encourage repeat business and referrals to new customers.

Want a more engaging blog? Shake up your content

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If your blog is starting to feel a little tired and uninspired lately, or if you’re running out of original content to engage readers, then it’s probably time to start diversifying your content. Here are two simple ways to accomplish this:

Shake up your content formats

Even if you have a wide variety of topics discussed on your blog, you could be missing opportunities to reach new audience segments if you’re only posting text-based blogs with an image here and there. Let’s face it: some people don’t have the time or interest to read several paragraphs of content, which is why mixing up your content formats could help you get your brand’s message out to people who might otherwise read the headline and leave.

Different content formats may include: video (after all, over 50% of marketers from around the world agree video content has the best ROI), listicles (think Buzzfeed-type of content but more specific to your brand), audio (podcasts are great for mobile users who tune in during their commutes), slideshows (SlideShare or Prezi are popular platforms for this), infographics (you can have an affordable infographic designed by professionals on sites like Fiverr or UpWork), and Q&A sessions with experts and influencers (great for driving their audience to your blog).

Bring in guest contributors

Speaking of experts and influencers: one of the best ways to freshen up your blog’s content production is by letting someone else take the reins on a subject. Depending on their background, they might have unique insight to offer what you might not have considered, which would be an incredibly useful resource for your audience. Guest contributors might even propose their own topics for your blog and encourage their audience to visit your blog (just as their guest post would likely link back to their blog/website, making it an informal partnership that’s a win-win for both of you).

Give your marketing strategy the human touch with personalization

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If you’re looking for a powerful marketing strategy that’s easy to do, look no further than personalization. Tailoring your messaging to individuals makes you very appealing to customers.

Here are three ways to do it.

First, personalize every communication. For example, go beyond using first names in email messages. Use the demographic information you have to offer specials or programs based on their individual information, like location or age.

Next, use social media to actually socialize. Don’t think of social media as a sales channel. Engage your customers and potential clients online through conversation, sharing and just being in touch. Nothing is more personal than receiving a direct response from a company. Talk to your audience about their concerns. Ask how you can help them achieve their goals. Solicit feedback about your products and services. This is a great way to interact one-on-one with people.

Finally, encourage your customers to use your app. If someone has your app on their phone, it’s important to them – or they wouldn’t have taken the time to download it. But people are busy, so it’s smart to re-engage those who may have abandoned the app. Send an email reminder to customers who haven’t used the app recently. Include a pop-up within the app that displays updates and new content. Use their first name and keep it casual, so you’re like a friend rather than a corporation.

Personalizing your messaging will help you engage with your audience – and turn them into a devoted fan base.